Strangely, there's also the ones who see "troll" or "flamebait" in a post and mod it up. Usually, the moderators will be in agreement about whether it should go up or down, but I can't detect a pattern. It's got nothing to do with whether they criticise free software or not... usually they do, regardless of the direction they move in.
Actually, all Unicode characters are expressable in UTF-8. All octets beneath 128 have the same meaning as ASCII, but once you get above that, you get combinations of octet sequences to express a single character. So the extended Latin sections (including Latin-1) as well as Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac and Thaana are encoded with two octets. Higher characters are encoded with three or four octets.
UTF-16 just uses bytes of 16 bits. Thirty-two bit characters are encoded using "surrogate pairs", which is essentially a 16-bit version of the 8-bit UTF-8.
Hopefully both. I learnt that lesson in grade 5, me and a teacher were going to print off a document, and the teacher said "we should save it first", and so we did. Then we went off and printed, and the computer crashed:) Never've not saved a document before printing since!
Umm... There was always the "Alt" key on Windows. On Mac, Alt brings up alternate characters. Alt is also in the same location as a Mac Command key (if memory serves, I've only got Mac and Sun keyboards around). Microsoft could've used "Alt+C" etc. (But then you lose Alt+F for accessing the file menu, I suppose.)
But yeah, regarding whingeing about Linux support for the meta key, I agree entirely. I firstly cannot understand what it is about hating the Windows key. I mean, sure it's got a Windows logo, but it's better to give it a function then to abhor it. Secondly, I don't abhor it, and I'd like to use it. On GTK+ applications, if you hover over an option and press a key combo, that gets bound to that function, so I have the "Copy" key on my keyboard bound to Copy in most applications. But if I want to use the Meta key, I can't. GTK+ just completely ignores it. Bizarreness. Hair-pulling-out-ness.
(As to copying from a terminal, nah, I just use the select buffer. Does the trick well enough. Don't think XTerm even has a way to access the copy buffer, and one's enough for me!)
(One thing I've never quite worked out is why the Mac alt key is called "option" when it brings up alternate characters, but the Windows alt key is called "alt" when it lets you access the options...)
You could replace nearly all the major applications and many of system components of Mac OS X, but then it wouldn't really be a Mac anymore, would it?.
I would hazard... yes! Does PathFinder or RBrowse work on GNU/Linux or Windows? How about iCab or Konfabulator? Just because you don't like the whole experience doesn't mean you still don't want the esesntial parts of the experience. When I switched the Mac, I did it because I was told it had sensible install/uninstall procedures. I left for reasons that couldn't be fixed by just replacing the file manager and the email client.
Likewise, on my laptop I have Ubuntu, only I've taken out Nautilus and Gnome-Session and GEdit and Firefox and replaced them with ROX-Filer and ROX-Session and ROX-Edit and Galeon. And I can't stand KDE and can only tolerate Gnome anyway. But it's not like it's suddenly not become a GNU/Linux box, or even not a Ubuntu box. Even though I've lost many of the advantages of Ubuntu (e.g. it doesn't automount USB drives atm), I've gained a system which I'm more comfortable with. And it's still essentially Ubuntu, just lie a Mac with replaced software is still essentially a Mac.
Gosh um, perhaps you could use some paragraphs? Makes it much easier to read, particular on a computer screen. I never know where to start reading Slashdot posts that have huge paragraphs;)
Regarding the Unicode one-byte shift, I've never heard of that before. What encoding of Unicode does it affect (e.g. all of them, UTF-8, UCS-2,...)? Is it documented on the web anywhere (by MS or third parties)? I use Unicode frequently and no-one's ever drawn my attention to it (but I never use Windows/IE if I can help it). I have heard that many people who should don't like using Unicode, but I just assumed that was because it increase the filesize/inertia--if what you is true that it could go some way to explaining it.
[Incidentally, I'm not a pansy, I have 240 V coming straight out of all my power points:)]
I will point out again that a court has found that Microsoft is a monopoly, and that I don't have a real interest in debating that point. Presumably the definition of "monopoly" is generous enough to include "controls well over 90% of the market".
Also the fact that most of Microsoft's major competition is free is not exactly an argument against considering them a monopoly.
Netscape Navigator had 70% of the web browser market share back in 1996. Like including a web browser in the operating system and distributing competing products for free was a threat to that.
But oh! You've already made an assertion that the courts disagree with and without providing any evidence, and expect us to take that us proof of your ineffable wisdom. I suppose you win this debate. Well done.
Microsoft's not in trouble because they've bundled software. Microsoft's in trouble because they've abused their monopoly in one area (end-user operating systems and office-program file formats) to gain monopolies in other areas (web browsers, media formats, server operating systems etc).
It's not the fact that there's a media player integrated with the OS: As you say, that's been around since Windows 3.something, and Apple's OS X and most GNU/Linux distributions contain them by default. It's the fact that they're abusing their operating system monopoly to encourage a file format monopoly, which will then re-inforce their OS monopoly. (Think about it: Support on GNU/Linux music/movie players for the WMV format is limited. Knowing that, will you be less likely to switch?)
OTOH, all free software uses documented, easily understood and re-implemented file formats. Even if Red Hat got a monopoly on OSes and used that to try for one on music players with Rhythmbox, Microsoft could easily write a better music player that supports Ogg Vorbis files, and users could switch at no cost in terms of file formats.
That's why Tridgell, who develops Samba, software which allows communication with Windows file and printer shares from alternative operating systems, is there. Tridgell didn't have a viable business that was ruined by Microsoft bundles. He's trying to create a better file server that users can switch to at no cost in terms of client/protocol support, and Microsoft is trying to stop him in ways European society (it seems) generally does not approve of.
Erm... Perhaps you never noticed, but gun control laws aren't "far left". In fact, in Australia their introduction was the initiative of right-wing Howard Government; they were implemented by the state governments which were right-wing Liberal Party or Liberal/National Coalition governments in most states. Our gun control laws are incredibly restrictive, and did certainly include confiscation and buy-backs.
You misunderstand. Your legislative bodies are elected in a series of smaller winner-takes-all elections. In a proportional election, the proportion of the Representatives from one party would correspond to the proportion of votes for that party in the election; so if the vote went 40% Republican, 30% Democrat, 10% Libertarian, 10% Greens, 10% various independents,* distributed equally across the whole country, then you'd get approximately 40% Republicans, 30% Democrats, 10% Libertarians, 10% Greens, 10% various independents elected to the House of Reps. By contrast, that same election under the current First-Past-the-Post winner-takes-all system America has, you'd get 100% Republicans.
I think before this could be applied to America, you'd either need to significantly increase the size of your House of Representatives (so that states like South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming had at least three or four Representatives), or abandon voting by state (which might not actually be any harder to abandon than the first-past-the-post system you have).
* Obviously that you can have independents in a proportional system means I've simplified --- but you can probably read up more on it yourself if you're interested.
This is just a bad idea. Not only is this not going through the W3C as it should to be standardized, but many sites do pixel positioning to have ultimate control over their design.
I do so desperately hope you do not think any webdesigner has "ultimate control" of their layout. They do not, and they should not. Almost every single web page I visit is changed a bit by my web browser to maximise my legibility and my usability. Fonts are over-rided, widths are changed, text is removed, links are underlined, other stuff is not.
I let publishers of books have full control over their layout, because they usually employ competent designers who realise that eight point text for the body text in wide blocks is completely illegible. I don't let publishers of websites do the same, because they have a habit of employing designers who think their job is to make the page look "cool" & "attractive". I came to your website for the content, not admire your precisely-placed pixels.
However, I do agree: this solution sounds like the worst of all possible worlds. All we need to do is get SVG support implemented in major browsers, and use SVG and the like for our designs. Then the screen resolution and pixel densities become completely meaningless, and we can go back to specifying sizes in meaningful units, like centimetres and ems.
Have they though? As far as I can tell, the only real group of free/open source devs who've actually been aiming at that are the Lindows, GNOME and Ubuntu teams (as well as various minor groups who are better compared to proprietry shareware devs): Gnome only since around when the 2.0 HIG was released (2001/2002ish); Ubuntu only since 2004. That's some impressive progress! I don't know how long Lindows have been going for, but I don't think basing it on KDE is good for that,* so they've destined themselves to failure.
Most other major free/open source software devs have been writing stuff much more for themselves & their users.
* Don't get me wrong. I hate KDE with a passion and will likely never run it. So I could be quite strongly biassed. But I don't think KDE is aiming at being an OS-X competitor. It's one of the pieces of free software written for the devs and their users.
I don't know that GNU/Linux distributions are immune from that problem. I'm using Debian; as far as I know, I can either use incredibly out-of-date packages in Debian Stable, or use Unstable or Testing and get a huge number of (potentially breaking but usually at least interface-changing) package updates along with any security fix. This annoys me and makes me less likely to upgrade.
And just as much as server maintainers don't patch, it's people on their desktops.
(I could be wrong with my characterisation of GNU/Linux as being either out-of-date+stable or reasonably-recent+changing. If I am, I'd like not to be.)
"Informative"? Certainly not. More like "Confused". No-one here ever said that AMD was first to have 64-bit processors. They're talking about 64-bit extensions i.e. to x86 processors.
Also there should be a PDF warning on the ECMA standards link, just a thought.
Depending on what browser you're using, you might actually be able to have a reasonably accurate automatic PDF warning system. It's not perfect (it goes by the name of the link, so if you've got a download page in between it marks it as PDF, and if there's a file without a PDF extension that is PDF, it doesn't get noted), but it works reasonably well. (Obviously the best solution is to get the linkmaker to do it properly, but if they don't, this is a pretty good fallback.)
Basically, you add the following exerpt to you system's CSS file, which is usually called chrome/userContent.css in your profile folder if you're using a Mozilla-based browser.
And this election year, as I mentioned, there are already a couple of other new parties with a lot more visibility and general appeal sucking away the available pool of risktaker voters.
Pardon my ignorance, but what is a "risktaker voter"? What risk is there in voting? There is almost no chance at all that your vote will be the deciding one; in almost all elections, your vote will either be superfluous to the winner, or you'll be voting for a loser.
Well, that'll only happen if the other 96% won't agree with each other. If they did, then they could form a 96% majority and be in government. This is presently the case in Germany, for instance. So I'd think the right way to characterise the system is that the people knowingly voted for parties who wouldn't agree with each other, but would agreee with the fringe.
It has NOTHING to do with human rights, which by the way are protected by international law.
Not in any way that counts. It still comes down to an issue of national laws, and if like me you happen to live in the only Western country without protection of human rights, well, fat lot of good the UN's going to do you.
(I know a lot of Americans reckon that their President and Congress are basically ignoring their Bill of Rights, but at least you've got one. Our present federal Government in Australia is against the idea of even bringing one in--apparently their word that they won't abuse us is good enough.)
She can refuse to sign and as you say, this would immediately provoke a constitutional crisis. Such a crisis would mean the end of the monarchy, no question, because if she assumes a political position, then she can't also be monarch - The People won't stand for that.
Comparatively republican Australia has survived interference by Governors and Governors-General in the political system. We're still not a republic, yet. (In fact, I'd be surprised if we're a republic before I die.)
Slashdot Mirror
And people complain when Slashdot posts point updates of Linux, yet here it's something that doesn't even exist!
Strangely, there's also the ones who see "troll" or "flamebait" in a post and mod it up. Usually, the moderators will be in agreement about whether it should go up or down, but I can't detect a pattern. It's got nothing to do with whether they criticise free software or not ... usually they do, regardless of the direction they move in.
Actually, all Unicode characters are expressable in UTF-8. All octets beneath 128 have the same meaning as ASCII, but once you get above that, you get combinations of octet sequences to express a single character. So the extended Latin sections (including Latin-1) as well as Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac and Thaana are encoded with two octets. Higher characters are encoded with three or four octets.
UTF-16 just uses bytes of 16 bits. Thirty-two bit characters are encoded using "surrogate pairs", which is essentially a 16-bit version of the 8-bit UTF-8.
Save or print.
:) Never've not saved a document before printing since!
Hopefully both. I learnt that lesson in grade 5, me and a teacher were going to print off a document, and the teacher said "we should save it first", and so we did. Then we went off and printed, and the computer crashed
Umm... There was always the "Alt" key on Windows. On Mac, Alt brings up alternate characters. Alt is also in the same location as a Mac Command key (if memory serves, I've only got Mac and Sun keyboards around). Microsoft could've used "Alt+C" etc. (But then you lose Alt+F for accessing the file menu, I suppose.)
But yeah, regarding whingeing about Linux support for the meta key, I agree entirely. I firstly cannot understand what it is about hating the Windows key. I mean, sure it's got a Windows logo, but it's better to give it a function then to abhor it. Secondly, I don't abhor it, and I'd like to use it. On GTK+ applications, if you hover over an option and press a key combo, that gets bound to that function, so I have the "Copy" key on my keyboard bound to Copy in most applications. But if I want to use the Meta key, I can't. GTK+ just completely ignores it. Bizarreness. Hair-pulling-out-ness.
(As to copying from a terminal, nah, I just use the select buffer. Does the trick well enough. Don't think XTerm even has a way to access the copy buffer, and one's enough for me!)
(One thing I've never quite worked out is why the Mac alt key is called "option" when it brings up alternate characters, but the Windows alt key is called "alt" when it lets you access the options...)
You could replace nearly all the major applications and many of system components of Mac OS X, but then it wouldn't really be a Mac anymore, would it?.
... yes! Does PathFinder or RBrowse work on GNU/Linux or Windows? How about iCab or Konfabulator? Just because you don't like the whole experience doesn't mean you still don't want the esesntial parts of the experience. When I switched the Mac, I did it because I was told it had sensible install/uninstall procedures. I left for reasons that couldn't be fixed by just replacing the file manager and the email client.
I would hazard
Likewise, on my laptop I have Ubuntu, only I've taken out Nautilus and Gnome-Session and GEdit and Firefox and replaced them with ROX-Filer and ROX-Session and ROX-Edit and Galeon. And I can't stand KDE and can only tolerate Gnome anyway. But it's not like it's suddenly not become a GNU/Linux box, or even not a Ubuntu box. Even though I've lost many of the advantages of Ubuntu (e.g. it doesn't automount USB drives atm), I've gained a system which I'm more comfortable with. And it's still essentially Ubuntu, just lie a Mac with replaced software is still essentially a Mac.
Gosh um, perhaps you could use some paragraphs? Makes it much easier to read, particular on a computer screen. I never know where to start reading Slashdot posts that have huge paragraphs ;)
...)? Is it documented on the web anywhere (by MS or third parties)? I use Unicode frequently and no-one's ever drawn my attention to it (but I never use Windows/IE if I can help it). I have heard that many people who should don't like using Unicode, but I just assumed that was because it increase the filesize/inertia--if what you is true that it could go some way to explaining it.
:)]
Regarding the Unicode one-byte shift, I've never heard of that before. What encoding of Unicode does it affect (e.g. all of them, UTF-8, UCS-2,
[Incidentally, I'm not a pansy, I have 240 V coming straight out of all my power points
I will point out again that a court has found that Microsoft is a monopoly, and that I don't have a real interest in debating that point. Presumably the definition of "monopoly" is generous enough to include "controls well over 90% of the market".
Also the fact that most of Microsoft's major competition is free is not exactly an argument against considering them a monopoly.
You've been modded up as Informative. That's funny.
Netscape Navigator had 70% of the web browser market share back in 1996. Like including a web browser in the operating system and distributing competing products for free was a threat to that.
But oh! You've already made an assertion that the courts disagree with and without providing any evidence, and expect us to take that us proof of your ineffable wisdom. I suppose you win this debate. Well done.
Mate, you've completely missed the point.
Microsoft's not in trouble because they've bundled software. Microsoft's in trouble because they've abused their monopoly in one area (end-user operating systems and office-program file formats) to gain monopolies in other areas (web browsers, media formats, server operating systems etc).
It's not the fact that there's a media player integrated with the OS: As you say, that's been around since Windows 3.something, and Apple's OS X and most GNU/Linux distributions contain them by default. It's the fact that they're abusing their operating system monopoly to encourage a file format monopoly, which will then re-inforce their OS monopoly. (Think about it: Support on GNU/Linux music/movie players for the WMV format is limited. Knowing that, will you be less likely to switch?)
OTOH, all free software uses documented, easily understood and re-implemented file formats. Even if Red Hat got a monopoly on OSes and used that to try for one on music players with Rhythmbox, Microsoft could easily write a better music player that supports Ogg Vorbis files, and users could switch at no cost in terms of file formats.
That's why Tridgell, who develops Samba, software which allows communication with Windows file and printer shares from alternative operating systems, is there. Tridgell didn't have a viable business that was ruined by Microsoft bundles. He's trying to create a better file server that users can switch to at no cost in terms of client/protocol support, and Microsoft is trying to stop him in ways European society (it seems) generally does not approve of.
Erm... Perhaps you never noticed, but gun control laws aren't "far left". In fact, in Australia their introduction was the initiative of right-wing Howard Government; they were implemented by the state governments which were right-wing Liberal Party or Liberal/National Coalition governments in most states. Our gun control laws are incredibly restrictive, and did certainly include confiscation and buy-backs.
we weren't conquered. Else, we'd speak english by now.
England (and the UK) has conquered many countries, some centuries before Quebec was French. Very few of them are wholely English-speaking.
Not that I'm saying anything about whether Quebec was conquered; my knowledge of your history is abysmal. Just your logic doesn't follow...
You misunderstand. Your legislative bodies are elected in a series of smaller winner-takes-all elections. In a proportional election, the proportion of the Representatives from one party would correspond to the proportion of votes for that party in the election; so if the vote went 40% Republican, 30% Democrat, 10% Libertarian, 10% Greens, 10% various independents,* distributed equally across the whole country, then you'd get approximately 40% Republicans, 30% Democrats, 10% Libertarians, 10% Greens, 10% various independents elected to the House of Reps. By contrast, that same election under the current First-Past-the-Post winner-takes-all system America has, you'd get 100% Republicans.
I think before this could be applied to America, you'd either need to significantly increase the size of your House of Representatives (so that states like South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming had at least three or four Representatives), or abandon voting by state (which might not actually be any harder to abandon than the first-past-the-post system you have).
* Obviously that you can have independents in a proportional system means I've simplified --- but you can probably read up more on it yourself if you're interested.
Hm,,, I've read some of your later posts and do apologise for not doing that before! Just take it as a rant against other people, not you :)
This is just a bad idea. Not only is this not going through the W3C as it should to be standardized, but many sites do pixel positioning to have ultimate control over their design.
I do so desperately hope you do not think any webdesigner has "ultimate control" of their layout. They do not, and they should not. Almost every single web page I visit is changed a bit by my web browser to maximise my legibility and my usability. Fonts are over-rided, widths are changed, text is removed, links are underlined, other stuff is not.
I let publishers of books have full control over their layout, because they usually employ competent designers who realise that eight point text for the body text in wide blocks is completely illegible. I don't let publishers of websites do the same, because they have a habit of employing designers who think their job is to make the page look "cool" & "attractive". I came to your website for the content, not admire your precisely-placed pixels.
However, I do agree: this solution sounds like the worst of all possible worlds. All we need to do is get SVG support implemented in major browsers, and use SVG and the like for our designs. Then the screen resolution and pixel densities become completely meaningless, and we can go back to specifying sizes in meaningful units, like centimetres and ems.
Have they though? As far as I can tell, the only real group of free/open source devs who've actually been aiming at that are the Lindows, GNOME and Ubuntu teams (as well as various minor groups who are better compared to proprietry shareware devs): Gnome only since around when the 2.0 HIG was released (2001/2002ish); Ubuntu only since 2004. That's some impressive progress! I don't know how long Lindows have been going for, but I don't think basing it on KDE is good for that,* so they've destined themselves to failure.
Most other major free/open source software devs have been writing stuff much more for themselves & their users.
* Don't get me wrong. I hate KDE with a passion and will likely never run it. So I could be quite strongly biassed. But I don't think KDE is aiming at being an OS-X competitor. It's one of the pieces of free software written for the devs and their users.
But ... Cringly was suggesting that MacOS X would convert to another kernel, so I don't think that's what he's got in mind.
I don't know that GNU/Linux distributions are immune from that problem. I'm using Debian; as far as I know, I can either use incredibly out-of-date packages in Debian Stable, or use Unstable or Testing and get a huge number of (potentially breaking but usually at least interface-changing) package updates along with any security fix. This annoys me and makes me less likely to upgrade.
And just as much as server maintainers don't patch, it's people on their desktops.
(I could be wrong with my characterisation of GNU/Linux as being either out-of-date+stable or reasonably-recent+changing. If I am, I'd like not to be.)
"Informative"? Certainly not. More like "Confused". No-one here ever said that AMD was first to have 64-bit processors. They're talking about 64-bit extensions i.e. to x86 processors.
Also there should be a PDF warning on the ECMA standards link, just a thought.
Depending on what browser you're using, you might actually be able to have a reasonably accurate automatic PDF warning system. It's not perfect (it goes by the name of the link, so if you've got a download page in between it marks it as PDF, and if there's a file without a PDF extension that is PDF, it doesn't get noted), but it works reasonably well. (Obviously the best solution is to get the linkmaker to do it properly, but if they don't, this is a pretty good fallback.)
Basically, you add the following exerpt to you system's CSS file, which is usually called chrome/userContent.css in your profile folder if you're using a Mozilla-based browser.
a[href$=".pdf"]:after {
font-size: smaller;
content: "[pdf]";
line-height: 0;
vertical-align: super;
text-decoration: none !important
}
I got it from someone else at Slashdot, but I can't remember who.
And this election year, as I mentioned, there are already a couple of other new parties with a lot more visibility and general appeal sucking away the available pool of risktaker voters.
Pardon my ignorance, but what is a "risktaker voter"? What risk is there in voting? There is almost no chance at all that your vote will be the deciding one; in almost all elections, your vote will either be superfluous to the winner, or you'll be voting for a loser.
Well, that'll only happen if the other 96% won't agree with each other. If they did, then they could form a 96% majority and be in government. This is presently the case in Germany, for instance. So I'd think the right way to characterise the system is that the people knowingly voted for parties who wouldn't agree with each other, but would agreee with the fringe.
Surely that's up to the Swedes.
It has NOTHING to do with human rights, which by the way are protected by international law.
Not in any way that counts. It still comes down to an issue of national laws, and if like me you happen to live in the only Western country without protection of human rights, well, fat lot of good the UN's going to do you.
(I know a lot of Americans reckon that their President and Congress are basically ignoring their Bill of Rights, but at least you've got one. Our present federal Government in Australia is against the idea of even bringing one in--apparently their word that they won't abuse us is good enough.)
She can refuse to sign and as you say, this would immediately provoke a constitutional crisis. Such a crisis would mean the end of the monarchy, no question, because if she assumes a political position, then she can't also be monarch - The People won't stand for that.
Comparatively republican Australia has survived interference by Governors and Governors-General in the political system. We're still not a republic, yet. (In fact, I'd be surprised if we're a republic before I die.)